Never Let You Go
by buffygirl52789
Summary: Sometimes you don't realize what you have until it slips from your fingers. GSR postfinale fic, spoilers through 7x24.


Disclaimer: If CSI: belonged to me, season 7 would not have ended the way it did.

Rating: PG

Pairing: Grissom/Sara

Summary: Sometimes you don't realize what you have until it slips from your fingers. Set immediately after the TBC, spoilers through 7x24.

Author's Notes: The finale left me with such strong feelings that this popped into my head and refused to leave until I got it out. Many thanks to babykid528 on livejournal for the amazing beta, you're a star! And considering this is my first GSR fic of more than a thousand words, any feedback would mean the world to me!

* * *

The first thing Sara noticed when she woke up was that she was very cold. Cold and wet. She instinctively tried to move but was shot down with a numbing pain that coursed through her body. She collapsed onto the wet ground, the mud seeping into her hair as she tried to force herself to remember what had happened.

She had left the lab after a sixteen hour shift. She had been standing at her car when someone had called her name. A female. And then there had been a horrible pain, and then just darkness.

Summoning every ounce of her strength, she attempted to turn her head and see why she couldn't move. There was something on top of her, so heavy she could feel it crushing her bones. It hurt to breathe. Her right arm was the only part of her body not restricted, and she reached it out as far as she could, hoping for something to hold onto, but all her fingers grasped was mud.

_He has to know where I am. They're coming for me._ She tried to comfort herself with reassuring thoughts, anything to stop the paralyzing fear that had been threatening to take over ever since she came to and realized her situation. _I can't die like this._

She experimentally tried to wiggle her toes, move anything to try and assess the extent of her injuries. To her relief, she had feeling in her legs, albeit just barely. The car was crushing her chest to the point where she was almost numb. _I'm trapped_, she realized. There was nothing she could do. She couldn't move, she couldn't see any signs of life within her blurred range of vision, and she could feel her body starting to shut down from the cold. _I need you_, she thought desperately. _Please find me._

* * *

"Tell me where Sara is!" Grissom yelled at her, his frustration finally consuming him as he attempted to shake the information out. He had tried to play her game, had tried to play along for Sara's sake, but every second counted, and he didn't have time for this anymore. Sara didn't have time. 

"I've got a pain in my sawdust..." Natalie sang, her strangely pitched voice the most chilling sound he'd ever heard. He brought a hand to his face in frustration. Her eyes were empty and cold, any connection or sense of trust he'd been building was gone. She continued to sing, wrapped up in her own little world. Grissom had never felt more helpless in his life. The one killer that had evaded him for months and defied all his expectations now had the thing that was most precious to him, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

He rose furiously from his chair, storming from the interrogation room and closing the door with a bang. Brass, who had been watching through the glass, stared at him as if he were a rabid animal, unsure how to proceed. "She's not going to tell us," Grissom half-growled, running a hand over his face as he paced, the sound of Natalie's haunting song slicing through his thoughts.

"I have every cop in Vegas out searching for Sara. The helicopters are flying over the desert right now, looking for the red Mustang. We're going to find her, Gil," Brass said determinedly. "Listen to me. We're not going to lose her."

This did little to soothe him, and he barely acknowledged the words of reassurance as he headed down the hall at top speed, certain that if he had to listen to Natalie for one more second he might explode. "Tow trucks. She couldn't have gotten that car out there from the junkyard herself. We need every towing company in a fifty mile radius."

"The guys are already on it," Brass said grimly, hurrying to keep up.

Grissom barged through the lab like a madman, ignoring the fearful, timid glances the techs gave him from behind their machines, some of them muttering to each other. The frightened buzz created by Sara's abduction would surely only be multiplied, once his accidental reveal of their relationship made it around. He hadn't even realized what he had said in front of the others until he reached the interrogation room, and he didn't care. At the moment, all the lengths they had gone to in order to keep their affair secret for nearly two years had seemed ridiculously insignificant. Maybe it was just the perspective of knowing that nothing a higher-up could ever say to him compared to the mind-numbing fear he had been experiencing ever since discovering the miniature of Sara. As he glanced around he almost dared Ecklie to emerge and discipline him for his indiscretion, because in his current state he would simply rip the man's head off without a second thought.

"Anything?" he demanded, spotting Nick emerging from the layout room.

"Sofia's talking to the tow truck companies, trying to locate the car. Catherine and Archie are going over all the traffic cameras near the lab for any sight of Natalie and Sara around the time she disappeared."

Grissom just stared at him. If that was the best his team could do, he was just going to have to get in a car and find Sara himself. He stormed past Nick in the direction of his office, his mind made up to do just that, when Greg came sprinting around the corner, his face flushed as he held up a slip of paper. "Sofia got a hit off one of the towing companies. They towed a red Mustang out near Lake Tahoe the day before yesterday, girl who matched Natalie's description made the call. The cops are already on their way." Greg thrust the piece of paper, containing the number of the road marker where the car had been dropped, at his boss, who snatched it from the young CSI's hand.

"I'll meet them there,"Grissom said breathlessly, fumbling for his keys. Catherine appeared out of nowhere, grabbing his arm.

"No way you're getting behind the wheel of a car. I'll drive."

* * *

Catherine stared straight ahead, her fingers wrapped around the wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white. The wipers furiously dispelled the rain from the windshield, and she refused to think about Sara out there alone in the rain. 

Grissom sat rigid in the passenger seat, ready to jump out of his skin. His eyes darted to the speedometer; she was pushing a hundred, a dangerous speed in these conditions. Normally he would have demanded that she slow down, but today he was thankful for her boldness.

They hadn't made love last night. They had both been at the lab late into the night, working the new murder, and by the time they'd finally gotten home they'd barely had the energy to kiss goodnight. After a brief restless sleep, he had gone back to work, leaving her to wake up alone.

If something happened to her, he would regret that the rest of his life.

She had been upset with him after what had happened with Heather. She never said as much, but he could see it in her eyes as she told him to "do what he had to do". He had taken her for granted, spent the night at another woman's home, only stopping for a second to _hope_ she'd understand. God, he had been so stupid. His own ignorance had made their last week together strained, and he hated himself for it. As he stared out the window, he swore to himself that if they both made it out of this alive, she would never doubt for another second how much she meant to him.

"So, are you going to tell me, or do I have to ask?" Catherine said, shattering the heavy silence. She glanced over at him and he could tell that she was attempting to make the situation as light as possible, take his mind off the deadly thoughts that were troubling him. He turned his head to stare at her, knowing exactly what she was referring to but not sure how to respond.

"I love her," he said finally, his voice hoarse.

"I gathered as much," she said quietly. He saw her shake her head. "How long?"

"Two years next week," he replied without needing to think. It was ironic that the last time his team had been in this situation had ended up bringing them together, and now it had the potential to rip them apart like nothing else.

"And you kept it a secret all this time." He could sense her frustration. "I can't believe I didn't see it sooner." She almost said something about her petty gossiping to Sara about Lady Heather, wincing at her own foolishness when she realized how hurtful her comments must have been, but stopped herself. That was the last thing he needed to hear. "Did _anyone_ know?"

"Jim," Grissom replied flatly. "A month ago he came to my house after hours to drop off a file, and she was there."

Of course. "_I know something even juicier than Grissom and Lady Heather_." Now that she knew, she could have slapped herself for not putting the pieces together sooner. Some investigator she was.

"Well, it's about time," she said, trying to hide the fear in her voice. "I'm proud of you."

"I'm not," he shot back. "This is my fault. I got careless, and now Sara's paying the price." Catherine looked at him as he stared straight ahead, and she realized with a sickening lurch that if they lost her, they lost him too.

Determined, she inched the sole of her stiletto downward on the gas as the speedometer inched towards 110.

* * *

They heard the crime scene before they saw it. The distant whir of helicopters made Grissom startle to the point where Catherine feared he might leap from the car while it was still moving. A moment later the flashing lights came into view as a dozen cop cars screeched to the side of the road, voices shouting and flashlights breaking through the rain as people headed towards something just out of sight, down the embankment. Neither of them needed to look to know what it was. She swerved to the side of the road, slamming the emergency brake into place as he descended from the car, a man possessed, and started to move faster than she'd ever seen him down the hill. She followed, her heels sliding in the mud, as the overturned red Mustang came into view. Her heart pounded in her throat, praying that they weren't too late. 

Ignoring the calls of the officers, vaguely recognizing Brass's voice in the crowd, Grissom half-slid down the hill, his mind free of coherent thoughts as he stumbled toward the wreckage with blatant disregard for the fact that he was severely contaminating the crime scene. A helicopter had landed a hundred yards away, and the paramedics reached the car first, crouching down on the wet ground. As he rounded the car he finally saw her and his heart nearly dropped from his body. She was pinned underneath, and her arm, which was sticking out exactly as Natalie had depicted it, wasn't moving. He vaguely remembered shoving an officer aside as he fell to his knees in front of her, grabbing her hand in his and startling at how cold it was.

"Sara, honey, I'm here. Please hang on," he begged her, feeling for a pulse.

"Mr. Grissom, we're going to have to ask you to step aside," a paramedic told him, the voice only faintly registering.

"Is she alive?" he managed to choke out.

"G-Gil."

He gasped out loud, lying prostrate on the ground in order to see her face underneath the car. Her eyelids were fluttering as she struggled to say his name. He felt one of her fingers twitch inside the shelter of his hands, and he nearly sobbed with joy.

"I'm here," he said. "I'm here." He kissed her freezing hand, forgetting for a second that he wasn't religious as he thanked whatever higher power had kept her alive.

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder. "Gil, they're going to lift the car off of her. You need to step back," Brass yelled over the commotion.

"I'm not going anywhere, just keep fighting," he pleaded with her before he allowed himself to be pulled off the ground, his hand slipping from hers as Brass pulled him backwards.

Warrick, Nick, and Greg were running down the hill, meeting up with Catherine a few yards away before running to their boss. "Is she-" Nick's voice broke.

"She's alive," Brass informed them, his own relief evident. "We're going to get her out of there."

The rest of the rescue was a blur. All he remembered was standing there with the rain pouring down on him as he watched the crane lift the car away, and paramedics swarming around Sara to the point where he could no longer see her. He vaguely remembered Catherine helping him into the ambulance, where they wouldn't let him get too close because they were too busy trying to stabilize her. And finally they arrived at Desert Palm, and he stood in the waiting room, his vision blurred as he watched them rush her down the hall on a stretcher. The next thing he remembered clearly after hearing Sara say his name was Catherine putting a cup of hospital coffee in his hand and urging him to sit down.

"I can't sit. Not until I know she's alright." He put the repulsive cup of coffee on a table. "What's taking so long?"

"We just got here," she reminded him gently. "I told the doctors to find us as soon as they know anything." She cleared her throat. "The guys are processing the scene. They wanted to come, but we need them there."

He nodded, an indescribable wave of emotions still running through him. The fear had been mixed with relief upon finding her still alive, but he knew that she was far from out of the woods. They had been unable to assess the extent of her injuries at the scene, and he refused to think about how long she'd been lying there in the rain, freezing.

"Pacing a hole in the floor isn't going to help," she said quietly. "How long has it been since you've eaten?"

"I'm not moving from this waiting room," he said firmly, stubborn as ever.

"Well, will you _please_ just sit down?" She plopped herself in one of the hard plastic chairs, hoping he'd follow her example.

They heard footsteps coming around the corner and nearly jumped out of their respective skins, only to see that it was just Brass. "Anything?" he asked. Grissom shook his head helplessly. The police captain gave his friend a quick once-over, noticing under the unflattering fluorescent lights of the hospital just how awful he looked. Aside from the giant circles under his eyes, his jacket and pants were covered with mud. "No offense, but you look like hell. We need to get you some clean clothes."

He glanced down at himself with disinterest. "I already told Catherine, I'm not moving from this room until I know she's alright," he said impatiently. Why was everyone so concerned about _him_? Sara was the one fighting for her life.

"Anything on the crime scene?" Catherine spoke up.

"Not yet. We still don't know how she managed to get the car on top..." he glanced at Gil, reconsidering his words, "where it was, and the rain likely washed away any chance of trace. But I'm not worried. We have enough to link her to the other murders, even without a confession." He sat down next to Catherine and they nervously looked at each other and back at Grissom, who showed no signs of relaxing anytime soon. "Sara's a fighter, Gil. She's going to pull through this."

Before anyone could respond to his words, the doctor came around the corner, a clipboard in hand as he regarded them. "Are you here with Miss Sidle?"

"Y-yes," Grissom stammered, his heart suddenly in his throat again. "Please tell me she's going to be okay." The desperation in his own voice frightened him.

"Well, right now she's stable. She has, however, been through a terrible ordeal. Her leg is broken and she has several broken ribs, and she was also in the early stages of hypothermia." He paused. "It's truly fortunate that you found her when you did. Any longer and she may have gone into shock."

"But she's going to be okay?" he said, his voice rising.

The doctor gave him a small smile. "Considering all she's been through, her vitals are very strong. She clearly has a strong will to live."

"Can I see her?" he asked breathlessly.

The doctor nodded. "She's been heavily medicated and she needs her rest, but you can have a few minutes."

A moment later he cautiously entered Sara's room in the ICU. A wave of pain rushed through him as he looked at her. He had never seen her look so...helpless. Her eyes were closed, her face was nearly as white as the sheets on the bed, and she was hooked up to a few machines which beeped periodically. "She...she's so pale," he managed to say.

"Her body temperature was very low when she was brought in, but the intravenous fluids will help." The doctor paused. "Only a few minutes." Grissom nodded in understanding and the doctor left them alone.

He proceeded to her bedside with caution, his movements now a stark contrast from his manic pacing in the waiting room. He sat down in the chair next to her and reached out, taking her hand in his, relieved to feel that it was much warmer than it had been when he'd found her. "I love you," he said softly. No matter how much difficulty he had always had expressing himself, he had sworn to himself that if they made it through this, he would never hesitate to say those words ever again.

She began to stir slightly, her head slowly turning towards him. Her eyes opened weakly. "Hi," he whispered, moving to the edge of his seat to be closer to her, his two hands gently clutching one of hers. "How are you feeling?"

"Gil," she said weakly. She blinked a few times, straining to look around the room. "Where am I?"

"You're in the hospital. But they said you're going to be fine," he said, his insides nearly dancing with joy from speaking those words.

She managed to focus her gaze on him. "D-did you get her?"

He nodded. "Yes. I promise you, she's never going to hurt anyone ever again." He slowly raised her hands to his lips, kissing it. "God, Sara, I'm so sorry. She did this to get to me, a-and I almost lost you." For the first time throughout the whole ordeal, he felt the tears start to come.

"It's not your fault," she said with surprising strength and clarity. She closed her eyes. "I knew you would find me." He saw a tear begin to fall down her cheek. "But I was still..."

"So was I. So was I." He reached out and brushed the tear from her cheek. "But I'm here now, and I'm never going to let you out of my sight again."

"I love you," she said tearily.

"I love you too," he said, not bothering to stop the flow of his own tears. He noticed that she was struggling to keep her eyes open. She probably had a million more questions for him, but the medication was kicking in and she was on the brink of sleep. "You rest now. I'll be here when you wake up." Her lips parted slightly as she tried to say something, but in the end she didn't have the strength. He continued to hold her hand as she drifted off to sleep. He took a long, ragged breath inward, attempting to compose himself.

A moment later, the doctor reappeared in the doorway. "I have to ask you to leave now. You can come back first thing in the morning, she should be more coherent then."

He stood with reluctance, not wanting to leave her side. Careful not to disturb her, he leaned forward and placed a kiss on her forehead before slowly exiting the room.

Once they were in the hallway, he turned to the doctor. "Thank you."

He nodded. "She's a strong one. She wasn't about to let go without a fight." He flashed him a small smile before walking away down the hall.

* * *

The next morning he kept his promise. As the sun rose over Desert Palm Hospital he was sitting vigil at her bedside. Catherine had finally persuaded him to let her take him home, where he had showered and changed after taking a look in the mirror and realizing that Brass had not been exaggerating about his appearance. But now at least he was clean, if not any less exhausted. He refused to sleep until after she woke up. 

He had been sitting there for about an hour when she finally awoke, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the early morning sunlight in the room. She moaned slightly, shifting uncomfortably and wincing in pain before spotting him sitting there and smiling. Gosh, he had never been so glad to see that gap-toothed smile in his life. "Good morning," he said, leaning forward to take her hand again. "How are you feeling?"

She took a moment to consider that. "It hurts when I breathe," she said finally.

"That's because you have three broken ribs. They have you on morphine for the pain."

She glanced down under the covers, noticing that her leg was in a cast. "My leg. It's broken, too." She seemed slightly annoyed at this revelation. "What else is wrong with me?"

"Other than a few broken bones, the doctors say you're doing remarkably well. You were a little hypothermic when they brought you in, but they gave you some fluids and your temperature is back in the normal range. They say you're quite the fighter," he said quietly.

She gazed at him. "I had a lot to fight for."

He smiled at her. "The team can't wait to see you. I think they're coming by soon." He paused, knowing that he had to tell her something before that happened, but unsure of what her reaction would be. "Sara..." he took a breath. "They know. About us."

She blinked and seemed to think about it for a moment. "Well it's about time," she finally said, with a wry half-smile. "They were bound to find out sooner or later."

He relaxed. "Yes, I guess you're right."

She shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position. "So what happened, I leave you alone for five minutes and you tell them everything?"

He smirked. "No. I didn't even mean to at first. But when I realized you were gone, that she had you..." his voice trailed off. "I kind of lost it." She nodded slightly, understanding.

"So on a scale from one to ten, how pissed was Ecklie when he found out?" she asked wearily.

Grissom fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Haven't seen him yet. But you know what, I don't care. You're okay, and right now that's all that matters."

She nodded, trying not to move too much to avoid the pain from her broken bones. "I almost gave up while I was out there, you know."

He shook his head. "Don't say that."

"No, I did. But then I remembered that I'm not ready to say goodbye," she said, her tone bittersweet.

He stroked her hand, glancing down at the floor. "All I could think about was how much time we wasted. We could have had this so much sooner if I hadn't been such a damn fool."

"Better late than never," she reminded him, the corners of her lips turning up in an ironic smile. "And as soon as I get out of here and out of this stupid cast, you can continue making that up to me."

He reached out and touched her face, bringing his lips to hers, careful not to do anything that would hurt her fragile, broken body. She kissed him back gratefully until they broke apart.

"Don't leave me again, okay?" he said quietly.

"Never," she promised. He sat back down in his chair and held her hand, taking a moment to count his blessings.

* * *

Thank you for reading! Remember, feedback is love!


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